Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Global media kingpin Rupert Murdoch's bid to tighten his stranglehold over the UK press faces a relentless challenge from Avaaz members, who've run adverts, staged public stunts, delivered massive petitions, and organised phone-ins week upon week in an effort to safeguard public debate. An Avaaz-commissioned independent poll found that only 5% of Brits take Murdoch's side -- and new criminal charges for hacking politicians' phones are further eroding the momentum of the Murdoch media machine. The government has been forced to extract concessions from Murdoch, and has now delayed a decision on the deal -- costing Murdoch billions and giving us more time to stop him for good.

The information Harwood had led him to believe two weeks after the event that he fell to the floor, lost his baton, received a blow to the head and was involved in violent and dangerous confrontations.

Last week he admitted that, though he had made these claims in a signed statement, none of it happened. So what was this information? Who gave it to him? Had he been brainwashed?

We have yet to hear John Yates's explanations for the ever-widening gulf between what he told parliament and what appears to have happened in the News of the World phone-hacking case, but they will doubtless be just as persuasive.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

To get a sense of what Avaaz is and how it operates you have to switch the lens 3,000 miles to a pleasantly light-filled office with great views overlooking Union Square in Manhattan. This is where Avaaz has its headquarters – if an organic network of internet activists can be said to have a headquarters. Avaaz, formed in 2007, has more than eight million members in 193 countries and can claim to be the largest online activist community in the world. This year alone it has attracted an extra one million members and it is now wholly self-funding with about $20m (£12m) raised so far in online donations.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

‘Your voice in tough times’

Labour’s leader has called for an independent enquiry into the Newscorp hacking saga. But the narrowness of the enquiry he wants – and the tardiness of the idea – support what many now feel runs throughout this saga: both Parties are too close to Rupert Murdoch, and both gave him the wherewithal to achieve dominance in the past.

Slightly over three months behind dozens of aggrieved Labour luvvies, seven Labour MPs, the Blogosphere, the press media, and even the BBC, Ed Miliband bravely stepped from his Nissen shelter this morning to call for an independent inquiry into press standards. The Labour leader ruled out the idea of government-regulated media (to do otherwise would’ve been political suicide) but couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) – naturally, it being chaired by the Tory peer Lady Buscombe.

“The PCC hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory,” said the main who funked no fewer than 37 opportunities to raise the issue under Parliamentary privilege at Prime Ministers’ Questions, once the scandal had finally gone ‘mainstream’ 94 days ago. The hypocrisy ingrained in such a remark is highlighted by this extract from the FT last February:

‘Labour’s leadership has told front-bench spokesmen not to draw links between Newscorp’s bid for BSkyB and the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. The party’s new director of strategy told the shadow cabinet they should not be seen to be acting with “spite” towards Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper group. In a leaked e-mail, the press office working for Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, passed on instructions to shadow cabinet members from Tom Baldwin, the director of strategy.’

The leaked e began: ‘BSkyB bid and phone tapping: These issues should not be linked. One is a competition issue, the other an allegation of criminal activity.’

So you can guess from that controversy-dodging diktat just how much better than the Coalition Brave Labour – ‘Your voice in tough times’ – would’ve been in keeping Murdoch’s ambitions under control.

Predictably, even now Miliband is steering well clear of any enquiry into the brutally obvious ramifications outside the press media: hacking Royals, blagging Ministers, corrupting police, Murdoch buying off victims, running untrue anti-terror stories, Home Office and MI6 involvement in the furnishing of secret mobile numbers, high-ranking Newscorp executives hob-nobbing with Prime Ministers, Met Police dining clubs, botched and curiously narrow police inquests run by Andy Hayman and John Yates, attempts to get Gordon Brown to call off the dogs, Newscorp editors hired by the Prime Minister, non-referral of bids for BSkyB from a media organisation up to its eyes in criminal incrimination, and the Murdoch empire lying brazenly to everyone at every stage of the media investigation into its illegally invasive activities.

Still, perhaps Ed is keeping his powder dry. Or alternatively, perhaps he has mislaid his spinal column.There being little or nothing atop the backbone, he probably doesn’t have much need for one anyway. Or it could be that his press officer Tom Baldwin – a Murdoch intimate, and author of the ‘lay off Rupert’ email – wouldn’t approve. So many questions, and so few answers. But what we do know is that Ed’s AV soulmate Vince Cable declared his intention to ‘get Murdoch’ some time ago. These two examples of courage are, to say the least, starkly contrasting.

But before ConservativeHome gets overexcited, what about Peta Buscombe, the dominatrix who runs the PCC with a rod of iron? In 2008, Marketing Week Editor Stuart Smith described her as “the most formidable advocate the commercial communications sector has seen in years.” Which is an interesting recommendation, given that these days her Ladyship is supposed to be defending the ordinary citizen from the communications sector.

In those days, Buscombe was the CEO of the Advertising Association. She is a lawyer by training (what else?) and also had quite long spells working for Barclays….whose upcoming problems must be giving her some pain. Way back in April 2003, Labour was busy passing the Communications Bill: that’s the one that first allowed big newspaper groups like Newscorp to buy television stations in the UK. The then Tory Lords culture spokesperson was Baroness Buscombe, who opined during the debates that there was “no reason to fear” the Bill, because “commercial companies cannot afford to ignore consumer demand”. Well clearly, Andy Coulson has never been one to fly in the face of consumer demand for stories, true or otherwise.

But before Labour readers in turn become tumescent, I should remind them that the Culture Secretary at the time was Tessa Jowell, the estranged wife of a man very friendly with that other media giant and teeny-despoiler, Silvio Berlusconi. Jowell denied what she called ‘conspiracy theories’ that the bill was designed to clear the way for Rupert Murdoch: “the Daily Mail or Daily Mirror would also be able to bid for stations,” she said with not very much prescience.

Is there a point to this piece? Actually, I think there are two: first, Murdoch’s malign influence – like The Slog – shows no political bias; and second, when it comes to protecting its citizens from business abuse in all its forms, the Westminster elite are a complete waste of space. In fact – much as it pains me to observe it about the Mother of Parliaments – they are complicit in that abuse.

There was huge shock among many red-top journalists last week at the latest News of the World journalist to have his collar felt as part of the criminal side of the phone-hacking inquiry – James Weatherup.

I met him when he won a darts competition Press Gazette ran in 2007 as part of a commercial tie-up with Ladbrokes. He seemed like a thoroughly nice guy – very far from the snarling tabloid hack of the public imagination.

In a sense the police are damned whatever they do now. If they are seen to be too lax there will be more allegations they are in cahoots with NI – yet at the same time one has to question why 45 detectives are being used to investigate tabloid snooping when so many more serious crimes go unsolved.

It was a travesty that Clive Goodman was locked up in Belmarsh in 2007 alongside murderers and rapists for what was a gross invasion of privacy, but no more. And it would be a huge over-reaction if more journalists suffered out of proportion punishments because of widespread anger over the perception that News International has been involved in a cover-up over phone-hacking.

We do now need to get to the bottom of this matter. News International will find that sunshine is the best way to disinfect its reputation.

But it would be grossly unfair to punish more and more ordinary hacks. Phone-hacking spread far, far beyond the News of the World so where would we stop? They threw the book at Goodman and it had the desired affect. As far as we know, no British journalists hack mobile phone messages any more.

News International brought this crisis on itself mainly by going far over-the-top in its “rogue reporter” defence and by sticking to that line in evidence to MPs in 2009.

Those who presided over a culture that let phone-hacking flourish and who then misled MPs and the public over the extent of the problem are those who should have the heaviest weight on their consciences.

News International now admits that its own investigation into phone-hacking was not sufficiently “robust” and it has apologised for that. Because so much litigation is ongoing it has to be careful about what it says. But I would venture that more apologies and more evidence of a thorough cleaning of its house will be needed before the News of the World and News International can start to turn the page on phone-hacking.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Charlie Brooker under fire for tabloid hack attack

Writers unhappy as Brooker accuses journalists of 'actively making the world worse'

Charlie Brooker was on typically coruscating form in his Guardian column this week - applying his trademark acerbic analysis to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and plunging his stiletto into the hearts of tabloid journalists and "the harrowing leukaemia-of-the-soul their career choice inflicts upon them".

Brooker's latest rant was, as ever, well received by his usual constituency, many of whom made their weekly pilgrimage to Twitter to applaud their hero, whose argument was based on the premise that tabloid reporters are "actively making the world worse".

However, Twitter has become the natural habitat of the media professional, many of whom have links to the tabloids or consider themselves to be champions of journalism in all its forms. So this week his views have also attracted some heavyweight criticism that has set the social networking site ablaze.

Leading the nay-sayers was Brooker's fellow Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore who commented: "Attacking tabloids in Guardian as Charlie Brooker does unedifying. Broad sheets pick up tab stories 2 days later and smother in po-mo [post modern] irony."

Times columnist Janice Turner, better known to Twitter users by her handle Victoria Peckham, also registered her displeasure, declaring: "Oh Charlie Brooker clamber down off your moral high-cock. You make a living sneering at TV, not curing AIDS. You sound as sour as Daily Mail."

Meanwhile Brooker's assertion that "successfully forging the belief that tabloid journalism is a worthwhile use of your brief time on this planet must require a mental leap beyond the reach of Galileo" obviously incensed Sun journalist Tom Thorogood.

His succinct reply befitted someone who works for a tabloid. He commented: "Charlie Brooker can fuck himself. That column is so far off the mark. At least only 8 people outside of the left wing media bubble read it."

More measured criticism came from a Twitter user called Rebecca_mt who wrote: "There's something unbearably smug about a Guardian journalist wittering on how dreadful and evil Other Hacks are." The words "sanctimonious bullshit" were also used to describe the column by at least one reader.

Other critics pointed out that the Guardian website had used the old tabloid trick of 'sexing up' a thought piece about the concept of journalism with a picture of a glamorous young women, in this case Sienna Miller.

The criticism obviously didn't pass Brooker by, and he decided to defend himself on the social networking site. His initial gambit was to say: "Hey, I never claimed I'm *not* wasting *my* life actively making the world worse."

He even got dragged into a conversation with well known Tweeter and anonymous blogger FleetStreetFox who scolded him by saying: "It's not criticism I mind. But reducing every member in one industry to the level of its worst member is just dumb."

At first Brooker appeared conciliatory, confessing: "The reaction has surprised me though." But by lunchtime he had obviously grown tired of the carping from his fellow writers and reverted to attack mode, dismissing his critics with another well-aimed barb.

"Fuck me what weeping kids some hacks are. I write similar stuff *every week*. Usually about Mac owners & whatnot. No sense of humour. Pff."

The Magna Carta is being contravened by the new breed of gagging orders, claims Lib Dem MP John Hemming. Photograph: Michael Nagle/Getty Images

An MP who is launching an inquiry into excessive and possibly unlawful court secrecy says a new type of gagging order is hampering the work of investigative journalists.

John Hemming said the new breed of injunction, which was used in relation to a case in the high court in London last week, meant journalists could face jail simply for asking questions.

"This goes a step further than preventing people speaking out against injustice," said Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley and a longtime campaigner against secrecy. "It has the effect of preventing journalists from speaking to people subject to this injunction without a risk of the journalist going to jail. That is a recipe for hiding miscarriages of justice."

Hemming has labelled the new gagging order the "quaero injunction" after the Latin word "to seek".

"It puts any investigative journalist at risk if they ask any questions of a victim of a potential miscarriage of justice … I don't think this should be allowed in English courts."

There has been growing concern over the use of gagging orders in UK courts. It is not known precisely how many superinjunctions have been issued, but an informed legal estimate is that as many as 20 have been granted in the UK over the last 18 months.

In the most notorious case, the oil trader Trafigura last year briefly obtained a superinjunction against the Guardian to suppress a leaked report on its toxic waste dumping, which even prevented reporting proceedings in parliament.

He says he is now launching an inquiry in parliament into excess court secrecy and is planning to collect a range of gagging orders that he will then analyse and present to the justice select committee in a number of "parliamentary petitions" later this year.

"What is clear is that almost all of the superinjunctions and hyperinjunctions have no public judgment," Hemming said. "That means that they are not compliant with the rules for a fair trial. There is also the question as to whether there should be an automatic time limit on an interim order. Many cases have an interim order and no final hearing. This is clearly wrong."We also need to know what the costs are both for the applicant and for the media in defending these orders. It is wrong to have a system whereby people can buy the sort of justice they want. That is a contravention of clause 29 of Magna Carta 1297, which is still in force."

Hemming is asking anyone who is subject to a gagging injunction that they would like to be included in the review to forward the information to him at the House of Commons.

To its credit, Sky News also wanted to broadcast extracts, having contacted us about the article on several occasions. However, the BBC has been curiously silent, and has made no attempt to report what most other media outlets and most of the Twittersphere – oh yes, Hugh Grant has been trending – have conceded to be a significant story.

When Jemima Khan and I were discussing her guest edit of the New Statesman we agreed that she would do only two interviews to promote it, one print (the London Evening Standard) and one broadcast. BBC2's Newsnight wanted to have her on the programme to talk about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. That didn't interest us. I thought the Today programme, with its six million listeners, would be preferable.

I spoke to a contact at Today and, in confidence, told him about the Hugh Grant story and its implications. He was very interested and said that his night editor – this was on the evening of Wednesday 6 April, just ahead of publication of the magazine – would call me back to discuss having Jemima on the programme the following morning to talk about Hugh, phone-tapping and the News of the World. (In his reportHugh revealed for the first time that he had been hacked by the News of the World, not an uninteresting revelation, and one that Jemima, his former girlfriend, was happy to discuss candidly in her only broadcast media interview.)

In the event, the night editor did not call me back, not even by way of courtesy. Our conclusion is that the Today programme either has no sense of a story or, more likely, someone there was alarmed at the prospect of covering Grant's adventure as an undercover reporter and some of the more powerful allegations made by McMullan, who seems like a first-rate huckster.

Something similar happened when my colleague Helen Lewis-Hasteley spoke to Radio 5's Drive programme this week to discuss appearing on the show, as she sometimes does. "Would you like me to talk about Hugh Grant?" she asked. There was a chorus of "Nos" from the producers. Similarly, she spent 20 minutes talking to BBC Radio Kent on Friday 8 March, in a spiky interview covering the ethics of covert recordings and whether the New Statesman was "buying into celebrity culture". It was not broadcast.

"I can understand some of the frustration the Guardian must feel about this story," says Helen. "To give them their credit, they have been plugging away at this issue for months – while many other commentators said there was 'nothing to see here' – and have been studiously ignored for their trouble. Even now there have been further arrests, and News International has apologised and offered payouts to several victims, the extent of the media silence is astonishing."

What is going on?

What is it about this story that makes the BBC so anxious? Could it be that independent BBC editors are operating a form of self-censorship because they fear ... what, exactly? What is that our licence-fee-funded, "impartial", public-service broadcaster fears about the Murdoch family and its tentacular grip on power in Britain? Or has an edict come down from on high? We should be told.

Update: The BBC have been in touch to say that the interview with Helen was in fact broadcast - elsewhere in the programme.

More...

'That is what we have in this country, independent police, independent prosecutors, that is what should happen and the politicians shouldn't get involved.'

Asked about a public inquiry, Mr Cameron said: 'There is always a difficulty of holding inquiries when you have active police investigations ongoing.

News International: The biggest newspaper group in Britain could face a second investigation

'I think the most important thing is, as I have said, for the police, the prosecutors, to do their job, there is a whole range of civil actions as I understand also taking place, the politicians should stand back and let that happen.

'The law is perfectly clear, the law doesn't need I think to be changed. Phone hacking is illegal, quite rightly too, those who do it are wrong and prosecution is an option for the police.'Rupert Murdoch's News International has expressed sincere regret about the hacking scandal, admitted failings in its previous internal inquiries and offered to compensate victims with 'justifiable cases'. Twenty-four public figures, including the comedian Steve Coogan and jockey Kieren Fallon, are suing the paper.

Clive Goodman, the former royal editor, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private detective contracted to work for the News of the World, were jailed in 2007 for phone hacking offences.

Hacked: Comedian Steve Coogan and jockey Kieren Fallon are among 24 public figures who are suing the paper

A government spokesman had previously suggested a public inquiry and tighter regulation of the press will be considered after criminal investigations into phone hacking allegations are complete.

Lord Wallace, a government whip, told the House of Lords that some journalists had behaved like bankers, breaking an understanding that they would have light-touch regulation in exchange for behaving responsibly.

He suggested that an independent inquiry into phone hacking, and the broader between politics and the press, would be necessary.

The Liberal Democrat peer also agreed that the Press Complaints Commission might have to become a statutory regulator.

Last week it was reported that Scotland Yard bugged the phone of former Sun and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks (pictured with Rupert Murdoch). Photograph: Indigo/Getty Images

The trouble with so much phone-hacking murk is that ordinary standards of press-freedom behaviour get lost in the dirty washing. Take the Guardian report last week that, early in 2004, a Home Office warrant allowed Scotland Yard to bug the phone of Rebekah Brooks as part of an anti-corruption investigation of the News of the World.

They didn't find anything, apparently.

But that's not quite the point.

In 2004, Ms Brooks was editor of the Sun, not the News of the World: so maybe it was a crossed line anyway.

And why should we be so damned insouciant about tapping newspaper editors' phones? This is Wapping, not Belarus.

(Oh! And it might be a touch better on the freedom front if newspaper legal teams, led by the Sun, weren't quite so anxious about turning the anonymity of a "world famous actor, father and loving husband" who slept with the 23-year-old who once slept with Wayne Rooney into some kind of holy crusade for glasnost. All this repression may be a bit galling, chaps: but please try to find a better example.)

Him [...] Cameron must have known - that's the bigger scandal. He had to jump into bed with Murdoch as everyone had, starting with Thatcher in the Seventies . . . Tony Blair . . . [tape is hard to hear here] Maggie openly courted Murdoch, saying, you know, "Please support me." So when Cameron, when it came his turn to go to Murdoch via Rebekah Wade . . . Cameron went horse riding regularly with Rebekah. I know, because as well as doorstepping celebrities, I've also doorstepped my ex-boss by hiding in the bushes, waiting for her to come past with Cameron on a horse . . . before the election to show that - you know - Murdoch was backing Cameron.

Him So I was sent to do a feature on Moulin Rouge! at Cannes, which was a great send anyway. Basically my brief was to see who Nicole Kidman was shagging - what she was doing, poking through her bins and get some stuff on her. So Murdoch's paying her five million quid to big up the French and at the same time paying me £5.50 to fuck her up . . . So all hail the master. We're just pawns in his game. How perverse is that?

Me Wow. You reckon he never knew about it?

Him [pause] I don't even think he really worried himself too much about it.

Me What's his son called?

Him James. They're all mates together. They all go horse riding. You've got Jeremy Clarkson lives here [in Oxfordshire]. Cameron lives here, and Rebekah Wade is married to Brooks's son [the former racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks]. Cameron gets dressed up as the Stig to go to Clarkson's 50th birthday party [NB: it was actually to record a video message for the party]. Is that demeaning for a prime minister? It should be the other way round, shouldn't it? So basically, Cameron is very much in debt to Rebekah Wade for helping him not quite win the election . . . So that was my submission to parliament - that Cameron's either a liar or an idiot.

Me So they all knew? Wade probably knew all about it all?

Him [...] Cameron must have known - that's the bigger scandal. He had to jump into bed with Murdoch as everyone had, starting with Thatcher in the Seventies . . . Tony Blair . . . [tape is hard to hear here] Maggie openly courted Murdoch, saying, you know, "Please support me." So when Cameron, when it came his turn to go to Murdoch via Rebekah Wade . . . Cameron went horse riding regularly with Rebekah. I know, because as well as doorstepping celebrities, I've also doorstepped my ex-boss by hiding in the bushes, waiting for her to come past with Cameron on a horse . . . before the election to show that - you know - Murdoch was backing Cameron.

MeAh . . . I think that was one of the questions asked last week at one of the parliamentary committees. They asked Yates [John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police] if it was true that he thought that the NoW had been hacking the phones of friends and family of those girls who were murdered . . . the Soham murder and the Milly girl [Milly Dowler].

Him Yeah. Yeah. It's more than likely. Yeah . . . It was quite routine. Yeah - friends and family is something that's not as easy to justify as the other things.

Leading article: News International has a long way to go

Sunday, 10 April 2011

Rupert Murdoch's retreat from the "three monkeys" defence of his newspapers' illegal eavesdropping has been long drawn out. Senior managers at News International, publishers of the News of the World, The Sun, The Sunday Times and The Times, saw no evil, heard no evil and therefore said nothing about the evils of telephone hacking. When they carried out "thorough" internal investigations, they found no evil beyond one rogue reporter. And, no, your honour, they couldn't find any emails. Not until Mr Justice Vos recently lost his patience did they say: "Oh, you mean look on the server? Goodness gracious, well, aren't these IT people clever?"

It was never convincing that the resort to illegal methods was a freelance operation by a few bad apples, about which editors and managers who signed large cheques were ignorant. Now News International has admitted that much of its defence over the past five years was hokum, and has set aside £20m to settle out of court with a group of famous people who claim their privacy has been violated.

Related articles

This is a welcome if belated admission, although it is by no means the last stand. At each stage, News International has turned and tried to make a stand. At each stage, it has been forced to admit that previous denials were inoperative.

Before the retreat resumes, however, we should be clear about what was wrong and what more needs to be done to put it right. But first we have an interest to declare. Although News International is not alone in using such methods, this newspaper has never hacked into people's voicemails, and nor has our sister title, The Independent.

There may be occasions when subterfuge is justified. If a journalist has evidence that a crime has been committed or information is being withheld from the public against its interest, and there is no other way of substantiating the story, then a case can be made.

What are plainly unjustified and illegal, however, are fishing expeditions by which journalists listen in to the voicemails of celebrities in the hope of picking up gossip or details of the movements of their prey. That is completely different from having evidence that gives rise to a reasonable suspicion that information is being withheld against the public interest, and then using covert methods to prove or disprove that supposition.

Equally, it is worth recalling that the British press is probably the most vigorous and entertaining in the world. Much of the output of News International titles is of enviably high quality. And in many cases it is hard to summon much sympathy for celebrities who have used the media, or employed consultants to do so, for their own ends.

But this scandal is not just about movie stars, royalty and politicians. As Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's head of communications, has pointed out, junior staff have lost their jobs when they have been wrongly accused by targeted employers of leaking to the papers. As we confirm today, the telephones of the families of the two girls murdered in Soham have been hacked. This is unacceptable, and one of the first stops on the next leg of the Murdoch family's retreat ought to be to compensate the large numbers of people who are not famous, or have not chosen to be well known, whose privacy has been violated.

Then News International – and other newspaper groups – need to come clean about who knew what and why it will not happen again. Beyond that, there remain some uncomfortable questions for the Government in general and the Prime Minister in particular. David Cameron has dispensed with the services of Andy Coulson, the editor who left the NoW when the scandal broke, but remains vulnerable over his closeness to Rebekah Brooks, Mr Coulson's predecessor, now in charge of the Murdoch empire's damage limitation exercise. It has been alleged that Mr Cameron and Ms Brooks have been riding together. No 10 has been evasive about a dinner over Christmas at which Ms Brooks entertained the Prime Minister and James Murdoch at her Oxfordshire home. Mr Cameron almost seems to be suggesting that the secrecy shrouding the dinner is part of his right to respect for his private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention. We disagree.

Such evasion makes it harder for the Government to be seen as an impartial broker of the buyout of the minority shareholders in Sky and the divestment of Sky News.

Both Mr Cameron and Mr Murdoch should remember the old Watergate rule, that the cover-up is often more of a problem than the original crime. Full disclosure is the only sensible option.

Richard Ingrams: Watch what we do, don't listen to what we say

Notebook

Saturday, 16 April 2011

When, in March 2003, the redheaded executive of News International and former editor of The Sun and the News Of The World, Rebekah Brooks, told the House of Commons committee "we have paid the police for information in the past", she did not mean that she had paid the police for information in the past.

"My intention," she now says in a letter to Keith Vaz MP, "was simply to comment generally on the widely held belief that payments had been made in the past to police officers."

So what was a statement of fact about her own actions was nothing of the kind. It was a comment, and not just any old comment, but a general comment by which she hopes us to understand that she was not referring just to her own newspaper but to the press in general. In fact, she made this clear by adding: "I was responding to a specific line of questioning on how newspapers get information."

Hiding behind this smokescreen of humbug, Brooks is anxious to avoid having to give details about any specific sums paid to specific officers – matters she would be very familiar with.

But the cynicism of her response to Vaz again suggests somebody who is not too bothered by the truth or otherwise of her public statements.

She has taken her lead from her boss Rupert Murdoch who apparently once said: "You tell these bloody politicians whatever they want to hear and when the deal is done you don't bother about it."

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story

I lost any respect I might have had for Gordon Brown about 10 years ago when he made an attack on Oxford University for failing to take pupils from state schools. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown instanced the case of a girl called Laura Spence from County Durham who had been refused admission to Magdalen College Oxford – "a scandal" he called it, though the college subsequently pointed out that Spence had come 10th in a competition for five places. Brown never withdrew the charge or acknowledged that he had got his facts wrong.

Nothing much has changed. This week David Cameron launched his own attack on Oxford. "I saw figures the other day that only one black person went to Oxford last year. I think that is disgraceful," he said.

And once again it was shown that Cameron had got his figures wrong, and that the actual figure was 27.

But, like Brown, Cameron has no intention of admitting a mistake.

Like Brown, he has an interest in attacking the alleged elitism of Oxford in order to divert attention from the inadequacies of the state education system. These, after all, are his personal responsibility which he might be expected to do something about.

Heart-on-sleeve politics is always a mistake

"I am never merry when I hear sweet music," says Jessica in The Merchant Of Venice, a tendency she shares with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, who told Jemima Khan in a New Statesman interview last week that he "cries regularly to music". It wasn't the best way of putting it because it doesn't make clear whether it's the music that makes him cry or whether he has a regular cry over, perhaps, tuition fees or the alternative vote system and the music is played to lift his spirits.

At any rate Clegg made the remark, not especially to elicit sympathy from the voters but to show what a sensitive fellow he is and this was a great mistake.

No politician should boast about his musical sensibilities.

If he thinks the subject of music may come up, he should familiarise himself with all the leading pop groups of the day and the titles of their latest songs. If interviewed he should say how much he enjoys them all, along with his kids if he has any. It was the former Tory leader, the late Sir Edward Heath, who tried to make political capital out of his love of music. He even went around conducting orchestras, and look where it got him.

Leading article: Who will police the police?

Saturday, 16 April 2011

Scotland Yard is considering a criminal investigation into claims that journalists have been paying police officers for information.

This is a belated response to the 2003 admission by Rebekah Brooks, then a senior editor at Rupert Murdoch's News International media group, that her journalists have "paid the police for information in the past".

If the police have been releasing sensitive information to journalists, in return for payment, that would meet most people's definition of corruption.

And this is a particularly insidious crime because it undermines faith in the police, in whom the power of enforcing the law has been entrusted. Ms Brooks, who has since risen to become the chief executive of News International, tried to backtrack this week, saying she does not have information about specific payments.

But there are plenty of other good reasons to believe that this has been widespread.

The former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan alleges that a fifth of Metropolitan Police officers have taken backhanders from tabloid journalists for information.

Yet the idea that Scotland Yard should be in charge of this investigation – or should decide whether there are grounds for a probe – is surely a bad joke.

It is inappropriate enough that the Metropolitan Police is investigating News International over the separate News of the World phone-hacking scandal after the force's lamentable (and suspicious) failure to do the job properly the first time around in 2006. But the notion that Scotland Yard can be trusted to investigate itself directly over corrupt dealings with tabloid journalists is even more ludicrous. An outside police force must be called in to conduct this probe.

There are very few organisations that, if accused of serious wrongdoing, would look credible if they volunteered to investigate themselves.

And, after everything we have learned in recent months, the Metropolitan Police certainly cannot be counted among their number.

Friday, April 15, 2011

After a chance meeting with a former News of the World executive who told him his phone had been hacked, Hugh Grant couldn’t resist going back to him – with a hidden tape recorder – to find out if there was more to the story . . .

When I broke down in my midlife crisis car in remotest Kent just before Christmas, a battered white van pulled up on the far carriageway.

To help, I thought. But when the driver got out he started taking pictures with a long-lens camera. He came closer to get better shots and I swore at him. Then he offered me a lift the last few miles to my destination. I suspected his motives and swore at him some more. (I'm not entirely sympathetic towards paparazzi.) Then I realised I couldn't get a taxi and was late. So I had to accept the lift.

He turned out to be an ex-News of the World investigative journalist and paparazzo, now running a pub in Dover. He still kept his camera in the car's glove box for just this kind of happy accident.

More than that, he was Paul McMullan, one of two ex-NoW hacks who had blown the whistle (in the Guardian and on Channel 4's Dispatches) on the full extent of phone-hacking at the paper, particularly under its former editor Andy Coulson. This was interesting, as I had been a victim - a fact he confirmed as we drove along. He also had an unusual defence of the practice: that phone-hacking was a price you had to pay for living in a free society. I asked how that worked exactly, but we ran out of time, and next thing we had arrived and he was asking me if I would pose for a photo with him, "not for publication, just for the wall of the pub".

I agreed and the picture duly appeared in the Mail on Sunday that weekend with his creative version of the encounter. He had asked me to drop into his pub some time. So when, some months later, Jemima asked me to write a piece for this paper, it occurred to me it might be interesting to take him up on his invitation.

I wanted to hear more about phone-hacking and the whole business of tabloid journalism. It occurred to me just to interview him straight, as he has, after all, been a whistleblower. But then I thought I might possibly get more, and it might be more fun, if I secretly taped him, The bugger bugged, as it were. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.

Me So, how's the whistleblowing going?

Him I'm trying to get a book published. I sent it off to a publisher who immediately accepted it and then it got legal and they said, "This is never going to get published."

Me Why? Because it accuses too many people of crime?

Him Yes, as I said to the parliamentary commission, Coulson knew all about it and regularly

ordered it . . . He [Coulson] rose quickly to the top; he wanted to cover his tracks all the time. So he wouldn't just write a story about a celeb who'd done something. He'd want to make sure they could never sue, so he wanted us to hear the celeb like you on tape saying, "Hello, darling, we had lovely sex last night." So that's on tape - OK, we've got that and so we can publish . . . Historically, the way it went was, in the early days of mobiles, we all had analogue mobiles and that was an absolute joy. You know, you just . . . sat outside Buckingham Palace with a £59 scanner you bought at Argos and get Prince Charles and everything he said.

Me Is that how the Squidgy tapes [of Diana's phone conversations] came out? Which was put down to radio hams, but was in fact . . .

Him Paps in the back of a van, yes . . . I mean, politicians were dropping like flies in the Nineties because it was so easy to get stuff on them. And, obviously, less easy to justify is celebrities. But yes.

And . . . it wasn't just the News of the World. It was , you know - the Mail?

Him Oh absolutely, yeah. When I went freelance in 2004 the biggest payers - you'd have thought it would be the NoW, but actually it was the Daily Mail. If I take a good picture, the first person I go to is - such as in your case - the Mail on Sunday. Did you see that story? The picture of you, breaking down . . . I ought to thank you for that. I got £3,000. Whooo!

Me But would they [the Mail] buy a phone-hacked story?

Him For about four or five years they've absolutely been cleaner than clean. And before that they weren't. They were as dirty as anyone . . . They had the most money.

MeSo everyone knew? I mean, would Rebekah Wade have known all this stuff was going on?

Him Good question. You're not taping, are you?

Me [slightly shrill voice] No.

HimWell, yeah. Clearly she . . . took over the job of [a journalist] who had a scanner who was trying to sell it to members of his own department. But it wasn't a big crime. [NB: Rebekah Brooks has always denied any knowledge of phone-hacking. The current police investigation is into events that took place after her editorship of the News of the World.]

It started off as fun - you know, it wasn't against the law, so why wouldn't you? And it was only because the MPs who were fiddling their expenses and being generally corrupt kept getting caught so much they changed the law in 2001 to make it illegal to buy and sell a digital scanner. So all we were left with was - you know - finding a blag to get your mobile [records] out of someone at Vodafone. Or, when someone's got it, other people swap things for it.

Me So they all knew?Wade probably knew all about it all?

Him [...] Cameron must have known - that's the bigger scandal. He had to jump into bed with Murdoch as everyone had, starting with Thatcher in the Seventies . . . Tony Blair . . . [tape is hard to hear here] Maggie openly courted Murdoch, saying, you know, "Please support me." So when Cameron, when it came his turn to go to Murdoch via Rebekah Wade . . . Cameron went horse riding regularly with Rebekah. I know, because as well as doorstepping celebrities, I've also doorstepped my ex-boss by hiding in the bushes, waiting for her to come past with Cameron on a horse . . . before the election to show that - you know - Murdoch was backing Cameron.

Me What happened to that story?

Him The Guardian paid for me to do it and I stepped in it and missed them, basically. They'd gone past - not as good as having a picture.

Me Do you think Murdoch knew about phone-hacking?

Him Errr, possibly not. He's a funny bloke given that he owns the Sun and the Screws . . . quite puritanical. Sorry to talk about Divine Brown, but when that came out . . . Murdoch was furious: "What are you putting that on our front page for? You're bringing down the tone of our papers." [Indicating himself] That's what we do over here.

Me Well, it's also because it was his film I was about to come out in.

Him Oh. I see.

Me Yeah. It was a Fox film.
[A pause here while we chat to other customers, and then - ]

Him So anyway, let me finish my story.

Me Murdoch, yes . . .

Him So I was sent to do a feature on Moulin Rouge! at Cannes, which was a great send anyway. Basically my brief was to see who Nicole Kidman was shagging - what she was doing, poking through her bins and get some stuff on her. So Murdoch's paying her five million quid to big up the French and at the same time paying me £5.50 to fuck her up . . . So all hail the master. We're just pawns in his game. How perverse is that?

Me Wow. You reckon he never knew about it?

Him [pause] I don't even think he really worried himself too much about it.

Me What's his son called?

Him James. They're all mates together. They all go horse riding. You've got Jeremy Clarkson lives here [in Oxfordshire]. Cameron lives here, and Rebekah Wade is married to Brooks's son [the former racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks]. Cameron gets dressed up as the Stig to go to Clarkson's 50th birthday party [NB: it was actually to record a video message for the party]. Is that demeaning for a prime minister? It should be the other way round, shouldn't it? So basically, Cameron is very much in debt to Rebekah Wade for helping him not quite win the election . . . So that was my submission to parliament - that Cameron's either a liar or an idiot.

Me But don't you think that all these prime ministers deliberately try to get the police to drag their feet about investigating the whole [phone-hacking] thing because they don't want to upset Murdoch?

Him Yeah. There's that . . . You also work a lot with policemen as well . . . One of the early stories was [and here he names a much-loved TV actress in her sixties] used to be a street walker - whether or not she was, but that's the tip.

Meand Chum MLTVA?!

Me I can't believe it. Oh no!

Chum Really??

Him Yeah. Well, not now . . .

Chum Oh, it'd be so much better if it was now.

Him So I asked a copper to get his hands on the phone files, but because it's only a caution it's not there any more. So that's the tip . . . it's a policeman ringing up a tabloid reporter and asking him for ten grand because this girl had been cautioned right at the start of his career. And then I ask another policemen to go and check the records . . . So that's happening regularly. So the police don't particularly want to investigate.

Me But do you think they're going to have to now?

Him I mean - 20 per cent of the Met has taken backhanders from tabloid hacks. So why would they want to open up that can of worms? . . . And what's wrong with that, anyway? It doesn't hurt anyone particularly. I mean, it could hurt someone's career - but isn't that the dance with the devil you have to play?

Me Well, I suppose the fact that they're dragging their feet while investigating a mass of phone-hacking - which is a crime - some people would think is a bit depressing about the police.

Him But then - should it be a crime? I mean, scanning never used to be a crime. Why should it be? You're transmitting your thoughts and your voice over the airwaves. How can you not expect someone to just stick up an aerial and listen in?

Me So if someone was on a landline and you had a way of tapping in . . .

Him Much harder to do.

Me But if you could, would you think that was illegal? Do you think that should be illegal?

Him I'd have to say quite possibly, yeah. I'd say that should be illegal.

Me But a mobile phone - a digital phone . . . you'd say it'd be all right to tap that?

Him I'm not sure about that. So we went from a point where anyone could listen in to anything. Like you, me, journalists could listen in to corrupt politicians, and this is why we have a reasonably fair society and a not particularly corrupt or criminal prime minister, whereas other countries have Gaddafi. Do you think it's right the only person with a decent digital scanner these days is the government? Whereas 20 years ago we all had a go? Are you comfortable that the only people who can listen in to you now are - is it MI5 or MI6?

Me I'd rather no one listened in, to be honest. And I might not be alone there. You probably wouldn't want people listening to your conversations.

Him I'm not interesting enough for anyone to want to listen in.

MeAh . . . I think that was one of the questions asked last week at one of the parliamentary committees. They asked Yates [John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police] if it was true that he thought that the NoW had been hacking the phones of friends and family of those girls who were murdered . . . the Soham murder and the Milly girl [Milly Dowler].

HimYeah. Yeah. It's more than likely. Yeah . . . It was quite routine. Yeah - friends and family is something that's not as easy to justify as the other things.

Me But celebrities you would justify because they're rich?

Him Yeah. I mean, if you don't like it, you've just got to get off the stage. It'll do wonders.

Me So I should have given up acting?

Him If you live off your image, you can't really complain about someone . . .

Me I live off my acting. Which is different to living off your image.

Him Yeah, but you're still presenting yourself to the public. And if the public didn't know you -

Me They don't give a shit. I got arrested with a hooker and they still came to my films. They don't give a fuck about your public image. They just care about whether you're in an entertaining film or not.

Him That's true . . . I have terrible difficulty with him [points to pap shot of Johnny Depp]. He's really difficult. You know, I was in Venice and he was a nightmare to do because he walks around looking like Michael Jackson. And the punchline was . . . after leading everyone a merry dance the film was shot on an open balcony - I mean, it was like - he was standing there in public.

Me And you don't see the difference between the two situations?

Chum He was actually working at this time? As opposed to having his own private time?

Him You can't hide all the time.

Me So you're saying, if you're Johnny Depp or me, you don't deserve to have a private life?

Him You make so much more money. You know, most people in Dover take home about £200 and struggle.

MeSo how much do you think the families of the Milly and Soham girls make?

HimOK, so there are examples that are poor and you can't justify - and that's clearly one of them.

Me I tell you the thing I still don't get - if you think it was all right to do all that stuff, why blow the whistle on it?

Him Errm . . . Right. That's interesting. I actually blew the whistle when a friend of mine at the Guardian kept hassling me for an interview. I said, "Well if you put the name of the Castle [his pub] on the front page of the Guardian, I'll do anything you like." So that's how it started.

Me So, have you been leant on by the NoW, News International, since you blew the whistle?

Him No, they've kept their distance. I mean, there's people who have much better records - my records are non-existent. There are people who actually have tapes and transcripts they did for Andy Coulson.

Me And where are these tapes and transcripts? Do you think they've been destroyed?

Him No, I'm sure they're saving them till they retire.

Me So did you personally ever listen to my voice messages?

Him No, I didn't personally ever listen to your voice messages. I did quite a lot of stories on you, though. You were a very good earner at times.

Those are the highlights. As I drove home past the white cliffs, I thought it was interesting - apart from the fact that Paul hates people like me, and I hate people like him, we got on quite well. And, absurdly, I felt a bit guilty for recording him.

And he does have a very nice pub. The Castle Inn, Dover, for the record. There are rooms available, too. He asked me if I'd like to sample the honeymoon suite some time: "I can guarantee your privacy."